All for me

Nel mezzo de camin-
At forty, which is half
Eighty degrees and not May
Fifty foot faces found me
Titanic and romantic
pom-pom pear blossoms sunny Carolina jessamine,
a poetic play (on words), an artistic triptych (on walls),
library lingering and lofty expectations for the big reveal, an hour to heal-
books, books, books, books,
in the mail every day without fail
around
my birthday
a bright star dies this very day
right before my eyes and I could say
I see and count
all the numerous ways
life loves me back (mostly
only) on my birthdays.




Image by Witold Pruszkowski, 1884 Falling Star, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A hermit in the heavenly hills

If I had my choice of two places, here and there,
I would find a small little crevice somewhere in between with a view far removed from all possible social interaction as though no place and everywhere and I could watch over and pretend I know the lines as though vicariously living as any one of those colorful caricatures playing life on the center stage-
If I had an twinge, a pang of sentimentality that one felt lonely for other human beings-
I could entertain nature everywhere, intentionally and extensionally and in every welcome space and every shapely mood, color, flavor, scent, temperature and do nothing but interpret and create, contemplate and disperse, make myself realize what I need to actualize for others out there and expel whatever it is I'm trying to tell infinitely catch and release, spinning my tales wildly with embroidered ideas and a flowing spring of hot creative juices that buzz with light and cool electricity for good conduct and I know it can be done by experience and exertion of will-
wait, isn't that what (a) god did?

No, I am no hermit or prophet, saint or sinner, I do not hide, but openly reside on the outside looking grim-but neither do I hide that I do not derive much pleasure from other pseudo-peopled predicaments and superficial social situations, too long is too much and talk is too small to hear any value worth that heartbeat just wasted on wispy vapid vocalizations, erstwhile, some stimulants are to be stoked and ignited, brightened into clarity by enhancing images of what you wish to be, look closely, don't tell, pleasure is an opportunity for silence and relishing the company of someone who understands your thoughts, only like you...
Reading you like a fairytale book, the ending amoral conjecture to put you back in your proper place, perplexed and planted, rooted in dis-content, too close to others for their own myopia, recycled carbon canary with nary a note to echo a name, such a short trip, there's no time for shame.

Ganesha in Blue (Jeans)

I don't know how many times since then I've said, I Guess I'll wear jeans, again.

To school?! My grandmother would screech. It became part of my vernacular.

A girl of 14 never forgets the first nice thing a boy says to her.
Matt D. told me,
as we passed for Silent Sustained Reading Class
that I looked good in blue jeans.

They were the expensive Guess, I remember,
with the zippers on the outsides of the ankles so rich kids didn't have to peg-huh?

My other grandmother bought them for me. I begged. She couldn't afford to say no to an only child.

The boy, Matt, was nervous and hesitated-more than once-even though I smiled nicely.

All 14-year-old women hate their bodies,
because of betrayal,
because they don't fit
anymore
anywhere
between
in.

Even now, blue jeans fit me to a T.
And I think he was right all along.

And I wonder
what would be the overall outcome, continual consequence, everlasting effect, chain reaction, spin-off-
if one brave honest boy told every shy unsure girl her genius was showing
and it fit her to a T,
that would be nice.




Image By Alanna_Kolette,_Miss_HIN_2009_midriff.jpg: Mark Sebastian from San Jose (Alanna_Kolette,_Miss_HIN_2009_midriff.jpg) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Persistence of a Polaroid

Life is life a circle because things come back around like the LP and portable photography.
I remember the first gen Polaroid flip-ups, like clunky transformers, hand-held photo booths. Magical really.
I came across one of these polaroid prints of antiquity, its still in good shape and I do not look pretty.
On the back, the yellowish bottom, the date caught me, written as three slash ninety-one.
I'll show it to you if you listen.
Three stand shoulder to shoulder in a dirt driveway. Behind them peaks the front of a pewter sedan.
Tall weeping willows fill the skyline behind them. A low white farm fence, the corner of an eave, two spilt terra cotta pots overgrown with happy green weeds and the three people squint at you in the hazy sun. Three shades of blondes together dis harmoniously.
The older man and woman wear black and white bright tennis shoes, the only formality their stiff posture, hands buried as fists both deep in the front pockets of their jeans.
A teen, she is fifteen, stands to their left holding a wildflower in her hands as though she has been twiddling it amused. Her babydoll dress is a full vase itself, her black tights do not shadow or slim her weight-but she smiles slightly and honestly in comfortable slippers.
The couple look as though they have been betrayed in some way.
The man with a mustache, dark denim jeans and Joe's Tavern black sweatshirt stands slightly behind and in the middle of the mother and daughter who bear no resemblance-which I know because I was there.
And I don't remember all the details...it looks to me like nowhere I'd want to be.
Such is the nature of a picture, to capture time and always have the same version of telling it as it was and not how it should be.
I happened to be looking for another photo and I think it was a Kodak, but for some reason that Kodak moment was meant to be lost and I decided to find out a little more about the inventor only to discover he passed away in March of 1991. Full circle moments always find you, and with a Polaroid, it will most certainly come back around like a full circle moment and it seems getting them lost is much harder than it sounds.

Image By Piercetheorganist at English Wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Five score and no more-ish

And I will do your list of one hundred things I love-
not because you told me to, that it would be good for me
to see these things in one safe place, like little word containers
as an apothecary, or even better a library, or that I'd thank you later for these little remedies
that remind, like lists, such as to-do's and guests and people and inventories.
No, I will do this list simply because I like lists and I don't like forgetting, or not trying, or not crossing something off when it was hard or good.
I don't like erase, like undoing, preventing, delaying until another day of de-laying.
So I will use perma-ink when thinking about this lovely list of things I love like-
deep belly laughs that sound unstoppable, rain of rooftops, rain ripples in puddles, grey days, fog, the heater on with the top down, reading, reading with a blanket and a cat, mornings alone, the first cup of coffee in the pot, the smell of fire, watching a fire, a fireplace with socks and a good book, Smokey, felines, horses, dolphins, the ocean, waves, sun, The Moon, clouds, stars, berries, camping, green, blue, birds, typewriters, antiques, art, ghosts, internet, technology, photography, warm cinnamon, green apple anything, soft blankets, firm beds, the smell of barbeque, cool san in between my toes, warm grass in between my toes, trees-redwoods, weeping willows, monkey pines, Monterey pines, pines, certain watches, certain shoes, smart dapper men, my hair drinking the sun, chills, a perfect sentence, great poetry, e.e. cummings, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Herman Hesse, Aldous Huxley, William Faulkner, Jorge Luis Borges, Nikoli Gogol, Anton Chekov, Boris Pasternak, music (so much more music it counts as four), Steamer Lane, Tamarack, Big Basin, Prague, everywhere I've never been (that's easily another 10), libraries, the smell of books-old and new (that's two), learning, listening, hearing, seeing, walking, feeling loved, waxflower, a great story, a great smile, a good soul.

Image By John Dalton, 1808 / Джон Дальтон, 1808 ([1] here / здесь) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Rushing River

Nysa County Sheriff's Department reported the discovery of a dead body floating down the S. Lette River, a popular camping and fishing destination during the summer months. Even though it was summertime the body was blue and bloated, the ice pack had been particularly good that year prior to the thaw. Forest Rangers were advised to notify in person any and all campers of the incident and remind them of being safe and responsible. The cause of death and identity of the body were unsolved.

The white haired child points and dips her little big toe into the flowing river water. She taps the surface with a tiny slap before jerking her naked leg back onto the bank. A half smile sneaks up to her face as she cranes her neck around to see if any adult eyes may be monitoring her moves. Aside from the quiet gurgles music notes dance among the trunks carried from some distance, the only company nearby the little body in an orange bathing suit with a brown belt in the late afternoon sun was a black dog sniffing and digging up rocks with his nose behind her.

"Hercules!" she whispered.

The dog was at her side before the exclamation point attentively wagging his tail. The little girl patted the top of his head, grabbing his soft ear in her palm always reassured her. The little white girl with her pale freckled skin and the shiny black dog, purple and wild stood like the illustration in a fairy tales book at the side of the Rushing River, something magical was about to happen, the music echoing from the nearby campsite predicted so.

The little girl put her arm around the dogs shoulders and was saying something into his ear, his head was cocked to the left and they seemed to be in involved in a conversation...it's a shame how many of us neglect this skill or simply lose this ability with atrophy.

Her right arm dropped to the ground as she fished around through the rocks, the dog closely watching each rock she dismissed. Finally, one stone in particular the little girl rubbed in between her hand before dipping it in the water. It looked as though she were going to keep it before she suddenly with a spasmodic jerk thrust the rock into the water, immediately inciting the dog to retrieve it,
"Go get it Herk!"

Again, the dog was in the water nearing its target before the girl could finish her command.
The dog made it just outside the rapids, raising his haunches before diving down and disappearing for a long moment then reappearing, repositioning his body toward the shore and paddling with all his might, he reached the shore and before shaking dropped a stone at the girls small feet. She squealed in delight confirming it was the rock she tossed and praised the proud pup.

The dog and the girl sat next to each other watching the water dance and sing entranced with the show of the massive melting ice flow churning white and sapphire.
The next second a flash of white-blond hair, a streak of orange, a thunderous splash, water fell in on itself and it was as though she were never there- were it not for the nervous black dog racing down the bank, circling, barking and prancing.
A tiny hand or twig, broke the surface enough for the dog to know where to go and he dove off a small ledge after the nearly drown frozen girl turning slowly from white to blue and whose contracted muscles gave up helping her fight for the direction up.
The swirls of water ate around the rocks hungrily, only the sharp water was happily slicing through life.
Minutes passed, the girl and dog were gone.
An hour later searching voices or disharmonious song came echoing from the treetops.
Pahhh-if----uuhhnnnneeyy!
Peh--suh--neeeeee!
Paah--tiff----eyyy!

The girl shivered next to the dog's limp body downstream in a patch of sun. Scrapes on both legs that did not hurt, her chest ached and waist sore from being pulled by her brown belt, a small canine tooth puncture on her side poured diluted blood down her side as she lay quietly humming to the dog who was not dead, just dog tired.

Image by By Phil Mieszkowski (talk · contribs), Merced River in Yosemite, California, 2007 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

His Rescue Human

He squints at me, he trusts I will be there squinting back when he peaks. There is no warmer hug, this is a soul kiss.
I feel the adoring heat of his glare anywhere he happens to touch my body with his searching eyes, content to be resting only on his favorite sight.
When life has me tangled in all its sticky strings, he helps unravel the yarn enough to let me take one deep breath and notice I am never alone in this web.
Battered and beaten, he pours all healing into me, it roars through my marrow and melts my stiff icy pain. I try to do the same yet I am inept.
Bloody, broken and brave, he protects and guards against anything he may deem suspiciously dangerous-to either of us-expecting nothing but safety and (my lap) some security in return.
Electric touch exchange, plugged in to each other, we alternate our currents as needed, the recharging makes me live longer, I can feel it with every smile.
The first and last thing I see every day, never ending is never long enough-for this one of nine nows that we share between animal worlds.
We recognize each others (like) ness, knowing we will always find each other again.
Each and every now and again-so often-i am-immortally in love with this divine feline who chose me to be his companion. I didn't know how lost I was until he found and rescued me (from me).

Little Miss Pants on Fire

Midway through, I thought I'd have it figured out. Not the ending, but what the beginning meant. This is why we are all obsessed with memory and invoke meaning where we think it should go. Although we also all know history has a voice of its own. Capital T, Truth is irrelevant. The moral is in the outcome, not the story itself. Most of my real memories I have put under lock and key deep in the dark corridors of my experiential mind. Safe keeping. My own and others safety.

So some do inevitably morph into secrets and some are tempted to sneak out. Needless to say, I don't like digging around for the right one. It's messy in there.

When asked to conjure up my first memory ever, I responded as anyone would to the request as though being asked to clean someone else's latrine. 

But I found it. For now, it's the first ever.

My first visceral memory is of being called a liar. Not just labeled a ‘liar’, but awarded for being the best one. A ribbon fashioned from construction paper made with two notched out blue bookmarks that formed a vee, a circle glued over their intersection point notating the number one was bestowed upon me in front of my elementary peers one day in Mrs. A’s class.

When I brought it home from school my grandparents giggled at my grand achievement, a little too much. Telling and showing whomever they could, including the mailman, who, like me, didn't seem to think it was as funny as they did.

I was 5 and in first grade at Loyola Elementary, a richy-rich school, although I had an inter-district transfer. I knew there was much about adult humor I had to learn. I did not ever end up learning it in school, however. I was not proud of my ribbon, but they were and proudly put it on the left side of the Frigidaire affixed with an old AAA fridge magnet. 

I thought I should be punished, I half expected it. As far as I had learned in my handful of years so far, lying was a sign of weakness, either used to protect me or make someone seem stronger than they were.

Even now I do not disagree with that definition, especially after having been divorced for some time from a compulsive liar, I have the accumulated a physical BS ton by volume amount of experience with lies, white and tall. 

I remember that handmade ribbon vividly with its bold royal blue bands and happy orange circle. It defined me, made me, made me look more alertly for lies, question what is good and what is bad, and helped me to discover ribbons of my own truth somewhere in the middle. Now I understand why I needed to remember this misremembered memory, hindsight provides clearer vision. I am learning to embrace my little Liar after receiving an award for #1 Storyteller in the first grade. I’ve figured out that the ending will write itself. 

Image of painting by Ludwig Koch (painter) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, c. 1918.

Night-lights Navigating the Web

It felt like the biggest thing since the Enlightenment, a reliable sturdy creation with infinite possibilities much larger than the house Emily Dickinson imagined.   

It was critical or lethal and a bit of both.

Look what we made!

Oh well, it’s out of the makers hands now. 

The hints were there all along, it was just picking up the remote signals.

We are all weavers of webs, despite the gossamer display of arachnids who have been at their art much longer and have endless spools.

Along the world wide lines, signals are sent and retrieved, divisible in byte sized bits, digestible only be permeability, though we work at it every day.

Self-absorption. Absorbing all around. Come on-we’re not that porous, we usually bob on the surface letting the timely tide take us integrated, aggregated, curated, cultivated, pseudo-created avatar ambling along, shrimps on a Joeless shoe-string.

Hang on the line, was once a real line to hang yourself with.

Tailored threads hand me down, TV has nothing on receiving, channeling, funneling people or bots to works we make for man’s sake, it all started out as useful.

Like blinking, we trust everything is there in between-

Searches and updates are endless, archives immense, impressive towers that loom, spin castles into clouds, no wonder its knot raining this winter.

The clutter we defragment into micro-chips, the bottom of the bag, petabytes of particles add up.

Fine as silk, the web that covers the world wide connected by sub oceanic cabling balloons from no birthdays, beacons blinking vibrations, its working, we are entangled.

A fiber optic photograph on a 11-D graph, an amazing maze we made, the complex vortex wrapping fellow weavers and believers in their own image and calling it a cocoon.  

Resurrecting Dark Ages. 

Image By Christian A Diez (Christian A Diez), The Web (2008) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Acting out

“I get it,” she informed me. “I understand it now Mom,” she says nonchalantly while rifling through the pantry for afterschool snacks, past the crackers, straight to the chocolate covered cashews.  She seemed further away today, or maybe got taller.

“Oh yeah?” I think I challenged back, likely defiantly.

“You just have to be crazy,” decidedly closing the cabinet.

“Hmm…” I cast a lure for another line.

“In theatre…if I stop trying to be normal and not stress about being all in control, it’s better that way-the performance.”

“I think you’re right. Actors-the good ones anyway-lose themselves, you forget they are acting.”

“Mom,” correcting my conclusion she explained, “I can’t lose myself when I haven’t even found myself.”

Little did she know, what you don’t know can’t hurt you.

Cutting the rug of sanity, dance like nobody is watching, unraveling is revealing.  



Image by Everett Shinn [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, Girl on Stage, 1906.  

Never trust a cook with a clean apron

The days we try to do what we do but it is hard, chunky, clunky even when balancing on muscle memory movements jerk and it still doesn't work-right-when writing is what you do but all those right words ellude, what to do with all that art that wont quit and just comes out like shit-
The forcible pushing through comes out labored and premature needing ICU(s), but tagged as terminal, I've flatlined-you knew it. You saw the trap and said nothing.
I got caught in all those corners where I am cowering from looking around for the little door, the way in, regretting all of the digging and the hole I burrowed myself in, eating dirt, thinking of Alice, and knowing a white apron and patience is all I will need in Wonderland.


Image by Conrad Poirier [Public domain or Public domain], Cooking Class at YWCA c. 1939, via Wikimedia Commons. 

Around the Bend: Trains (1)

There’s something about train stations and Mars-the canals (perhaps Percival planted that seed), No-the subversion, Martian-ness of this group travel, the train itself evocative of not just red and coal, gases and defiance, power, toxicity, it’s the Industry of it. And there is where one will certainly find the great hidden labyrinths below ground like in Paris. The romantic always interjects, yes, that is the fascination, the obsession, the fear, the fix of revolt and intrigue, our responsive, elemental self, raw and open to receiving. I see the train and I think I’ve seen it before. Not this one, not the ones in my town, in my lifetime.  The station itself, a hub I never frequented but feel at home. It is because it is so familiar, the sounds of multiple people bubbles jumping around one central location barely aware of one another, the sounds of such business on high and then a momentary hush, a warm wind and everyone suddenly remembers they are in the same place as others, going somewhere that is not here-together-today-anyway.

My grandfather was in the song “Morning Train” by Sheena Easton-not really, but it is certainly about him taking the morning train into the city-my grandmother would pick him up at the station in the evening with “the car” and notoriously kick up her left foot when they kissed before making the 40 minute drive home into the suburbs. That is true. I think he’s waiting for me at the train station, anytime he may be on one of the trains I impatiently anticipate that infallibly has nobody on it that I know, but I smile at them anyway since everyone likes to be welcomed home-even by a stranger at the train station thinking about the tunnels on Mars. 

Image By War Office official photographer, Horton (Cpt) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. W. Churchill waiting @ train station. 

Oboe We Are

We should treat ourselves as our finest instrument. An instrument we have gotten to know how to use over the years and the end goal of mastery is to become experts on our instruments, with our instruments, and yet all of us fumble a bit forgetting how it works, or neglecting the care and maintenance, turning our blind eye to the wear and tear and ultimately living our lives as though our instruments are a responsibility, our onus, our gift or curse, whatever, but existing outside of us. Our instrument is something we use to show how we do it.

For comparison sake I will compare thee to a woodwind. While neither you nor I need be musically tuned in any way I shall show is absolutely not necessary for full comprehension of this apt comparison. First and foremost, we are full of hot air. Likewise we need fine or general tuning before use. We can hear ourselves louder than anyone else. It doesn’t match what others hear. We can feel when we are off. We drool at the chance to be heard, to toot our own horns. And we, humans, all of us, bellow constantly whether in unison or solo, we think we sound better than we do. So if the oboe is our onus we should get to know its best notes, as the ugly duckling of Peter and the Wolf, we should know our part, play up our assets, and practice our skills, lightly.

Sadly, practice is hard, Practice is work, redundant work, it’s like work practicing.

No two oboes play the same, even with similar construction. I am an oboe, though, I have negative 12% musical talent, I hear myself, my oboeness and just recently I have been cleaning, properly storing and regularly my instrument. I’d even like to learn some new tunes once I become proficient at anything. Somedays I can’t even blow a note, so I admire what it can do while not having to waste my breath.  My oboe knows my moods, my pitch, my flaws, my touch, my lips, my song, and especially when my notes are all wrong.  

Practice does not make pitch perfect, but it does make it easy listening.  

Like the great Yogism goes, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.” 

Image by Thomas Eakins [Public domain], The Oboe Player (1903), via Wikimedia Commons.